Tims Les Paul Spalty

[Bass Guy]

That is looking beautiful!

[lawry]

I'm still sooo envious of the cap you scored on that thing, Tim. Drop dead gorgeous.

[lawry]

I'm still sooo envious of the cap you scored on that thing, Tim. Drop dead gorgeous.

[Timsan]

Tanks lads. I definitely lucked out with that cap!

[Timsan]

A spot of surgery last night...

I got all of the electronics in order over the last 24 hours. Thanks, Adam for putting that series of videos together! It mad a lot of sense of that bird's nest which is the Les Paul wiring system.
I found a nice little colour coding for the 3-way switch:

Output: Orange
Ground: Green
Blue: Bridge P/U
Purple: Neck P/U (there aren't many colours starting with N)

I tried to keep the blue wires for the Bridge P/U and purple for the neck P/U as much as possible. This helped a lot with keeping my right-brain on task.

Things are coming together now. It seems that building a guitar works on an exponential curve. The initial stages of sanding and applying the colour and top coats seem to take ages. But once they are done... BAM! the rest of it seems to come together relatively quickly.

[Timsan]

A question I do have is the relevance of the "string ground" wire from the tail piece to the Neck Vol Pot (?). Do I need it?

I've done a bit of research online, and there doesn't seem to be an absolute consensus about it. In fact, ther is a lot of heated debate about it. I guess I'll suck it and see. If there's still some hum/buzz after it's all put together I'll go back and install a string ground wire.

[Brendan]

Tim - if you're wanting to test with and without - I'd start with the ground wire in, but not connected. Pulling the guitar apart just to put a wire in is a pain...

[Timsan]

Fair point. I'll stick one in just to be on the safe side. Do I solder it to the Bridge or Neck vol pot?

[lawry]

Hi Tim. Watching this come together is pretty cool. As for your ground wire, it doesn't really matter where you join it as long as all the earths have continuity. It can be on the back of a pot or the output jack or anywhere.

[stan]

looks so good Tim, nice